What follows is a collection of snippets that have been floating around in my head. I put them here so I can free up space for other, more important things

You will die and they will find you

One thing that you learn very quickly the hard way in wormhole space is that there is almost always someone watching you, waiting for you to make a mistake. There are many counters people develop to decrease their risk in space: closing wormholes, posting scouts, persistent dscan, combat probes, etc. All are good steps to take but some are ignored by wormhole residents to their detriment.

One common mistake for PvE pilots is believing that you are safe when you only see core scanner probes.

Rule #1: You see probes, you stop what you are doing and get to a safer location

Nearly everything in a wormhole takes place either at an anomaly (does not require probes to warp to) or a signature (does require probes to warp to). I have seen time and time again where people in a gas site (signature) believe that they can only be found or are at risk only from combat probes. Yes, sites do despawn from the probe scanner but usually only when you are basically finished. Until then, it only takes a close hit from a set of core probes to get a warp to. For a cloaky scout, that's all they need and usually they can do it in less than 10 seconds using dscan to estimate your location and increase the chance of a 100% hit on the probes before removing them from the system. In the time it takes you to notice, ask your fleet or corp about the probes, or otherwise consider your options, you are just as likely to already be seconds away from being dropped on.

Rule #2: Move off the warp-in

While basically required for gas and data/relic sites, many PvE pilots do not move from the warp in when they engage sleepers in w-space in combat sites. Doing this makes it all the easier for your potential attacker to engage you when they land in the site.

Rule #3: Dscan, dscan, and more dscan

Even with the new combat recon dscan immunity, you should be hitting this button more than any other in your EVE client. It is a tremendous intelligence tool helping you identify active towers in a system, look for abandoned towers with loot to steal, spot targets to hunt, alert you to incoming danger, find tractor units and depots, and a whole host of other benefits. It must be your first and most frequent action while in space.

You are the content

People new to wormhole space can often be overwhelmed with what to do even in a game where it is already common to be overwhelmed by choices. I think even more so than any other part of EVE, wormhole space is without a doubt what you make of it. While high-sec has content that can be consumed, low-sec has the backdrop of faction warfare to drive it and null-sec has the looming specter of sovereignty, w-space has none of those. It is truly an open book that you must write for yourself.

Do what you find fun. Above all else, enjoy your time in EVE. Whether you get the most enjoyment out of grinding down sleepers, building ships from raw materials, or exploring to the far reaches of your wormhole chain, do what you find most fun.

Be patient. Don't rush to judgement or unwise action. Bait is most often bait and danger can lurk behind every dark corner. If you take your time and are patient, you may, however, find some of the most exciting times in EVE at your doorstep. People less patient that yourself will instead be the one to make the mistake that benefits you.

Just a quick note today. I am a huge fan of Feedly for reading news online. I have it packed with feeds from many topics that I follow and one of the largest in my list should come as no surprise, EVE.

Today I hit 151 feeds in my EVE category after adding two more new feeds I came across. While I'm sure that not all of these are active, the number struck me as something notable and I thought I would find a way to share that list. I don't maintain a "blog roll" on this blog yet because, as you can see, my list would be almost overwhelming. So instead I'll pass my current list along here and you can let me know if there is a notable EVE related blog that I'm missing

This past weekend included many firsts for myself and our corporation. Yes, we had members of our alliance who participated in the Titan event which, like most EVE live events, ended with it's share of controversy. Seems like a tempest in a teapot, but our guys who went seemed to have fun so kudos to the organizers despite what happened afterwards. But I am here to tell a different story.

It all started Friday. Being a day or two after the new year many of us, myself included, had extra time off of work which meant more time in EVE. I had an hour or so during the day where I did my normal wormhole maintenance tasks of scanning our chain and marking sites. We had our normal C3 and C5 statics as well as a nice C2 K162 which meant a high-sec entrance. Being that we had garnered ourselves a wardec with Marmites, we were careful about using high-sec entrances just in case, but we also had players who wanted to get back inside the wormhole after various activities and also get out for the titan event. There was nothing terribly exciting happneing, but I did note to our slack channel in the late afternoon that we had as Skyfighters scout in the C5. Along with a few other notable wormhole PvP corporations, Skyfighters was one that I always made sure everyone was aware when they are around. Skyfighters in the chain usually means explosions.

I had to break for some real life activities, but knew that I would have a nice chunk of time in the evening coming up. When that time came, I jumped online, saw that there was only minor activity in our system and decided to jump into the C2 again to see what was going on. To my surprise, I found a Raven on dscan. It took me a few minutes to realize that I didn't have combat anomalies on my map and then quickly found him in a site. As I reported this to my corpmates, one of them relayed a conversation they had had earlier with someone in Skyfighters. Some pleasantries had been exchanged between them along the lines of arranging for potential frigate/destroyer level combat if we were to encounter each other vs the inevitable T3 blob that we often found ourselves the victim of. I'm not always one to want to parlay with those corporations we encounter, but we had previous experiences with Isogen-5 along these same lines that ended up being lots of fun so I didn't mind. It quickly became apparent though that some miscommunication had happened and now Skyfighters was ready to fight even though we had only 3 people online. So I quickly suggested, that we team up and get the Raven

What resulted was a comedy of missteps on our part including an accidental decloaking, a hero Arazu tanking sleepers and Raven until another corpmate landed with a Sabre that barely sped into range to bubble the Raven while the calvary arrived.

BOOM

Our first combined kill in conjunction with another wormhole corporation. So instead of being shot at by Skyfighters, we shot a third party with them. "gf" were exchanged and Skyfighters scooted back through our C5 static connection to whatever they were doing when we interrupted them.

Fast forward to late in the evening. Guys were coming online. I had spent most of the evening fitting up ships that I had in my hanger in the wormhole from when we moved from the C2 to the C4. With our increased activity and more PvP on the horizon, I was sorely lacking in ships I could just jump into when the fire was lit. As our numbers increased, I mentioned that we had a top end gas site in our static C5 that was now End-Of-Life. Since we were unsure of the timing, it was decided we would just jump in and ninja as much as we could in the 20 minutes before the sleepers arrived, not wanting to risk our PvE fleet getting stuck inside a collapsed hole.

A corpmate jumped into a ship to see what was going on in the C5. He quickly reported finding three Naga's on dscan. Not only on dscan, but they were in the gas site that we were about to run! Not wanting to miss out on the chance for more explosions, we quickly formed up a small fleet of small ships designed to get under the guns of the Battleships and slowly plink them to death. Given that they were nearly finished with the sleepers, we decided to try to catch them on their exit wormhole which we presumed was the static C5. Someone noted that the pilots were ex-Skyfighters but this didn't really sink in at the time. Almost before we had a chance to organize, the battleships were in warp and we jumped for the hole only we landed just a bit too late and only saw the tail end of the battleships as they entered the wormhole. Knowing they would likely be back in gas mining ships, we waited.

After a few minutes a third party Kestrel came through, crapped his pants as bubbles went up and frigates locked and he jumped quickly back. As our dictor chased, he noted Venture's on dscan and then off in the neighboring system. Thinking that our Kestrel friend probably spooked the miners, we decided to leave a ship on the hole and swap to our own miners and get the gas which was now free of sleepers.

Reship. Warp. Huff.

Gas went into the ventures and prospects but it wasn't long before a Crow jumped the hole and warped directly to the site.

Warp. Jump. Wait.

A few guys reshipped and chased the Crow (who was one of the Naga pilots) who eventually left. We added a couple combat ships to our crew and returned the gassers to gassing.

Warp. Huff. Huff.

More Crow shenanigans at extreme ranges and then all was quiet for a while until the cry went out on comms that a fleet had jumped the hole. Dictors, interceptors, and frigs, oh my.

We warped the fleet to our hole only to find a bubble going up around us. We jumped. Some of us held cloak. I'm not actually sure of all the events since I was running three ships myself. I examined the bubble and set my Prospect first burning to the edge with MWD. I took some fire but made it to the edge and saw a disruptor flicker on and off and then I was in warp. I repeated with my 2nd venture and then my 3rd managing to get all of my people back to the tower. Failed gank since all of our mining ships made it out, but it wasn't just our Naga friend.

It was Skyfighters.

We all jumped into combat ships and hit the C5 static. I chose my Worm which was a new ship but one that I was anxious to try. Skyfighters was on the other side so I jumped across, found myself bubbled with what looked like 5 or 6 enemies and jumped back. They followed and the battle ensued.

Again, it happend fast. I quickly shot things. I exploded even quicker and was lucky to get my pod out.

A little bit of a loss on our side in terms of ISK due to the Garmur loss but it was exciting and fast and I think was really one of our first real PvP fights for our corporation. Previously we had what can only be described as ganks both for and against us but this was something new and it was great fun.

Thanks again to Skyfighters for both being on our side to pop a Raven and then bringing us an evening of entertainment with gas clearing Nagas, pestering Crows, and a failed gank turned into a real fight with I hope fun being had on all sides.

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